For: iOS | Price: Free
The app that made me get my iPad, Flipboard takes all your social feeds — that is, the links that your friends have posted to their walls/feeds — as well as feeds from your favourite blogs and magazines, and brings them together into a very attractive magazine-like package. Originally, Flipboard was only for the iPad, but this year it was unleashed on the iPhone. While the experience is less magazine-like on the smaller screen, the product is still just as compelling. On top of browsing, you can save articles to Instapaper, Pocket or Readability, and share them on Facebook, Twitter or email.
SBS World News Australia
For: iOS, Android | Price: Free
There are few news agencies in Australia that I really trust, but SBS is one. The Special Broadcasting Service provides a sane voice in a noisy landscape, providing important world news, rather than mindless celebrity gossip. If you want world news with an Australian perspective, you need this app. The app provides articles, video and audio reports, and can be navigated by topic or country.
Google Reader
For: Android | Price: Free
Sick of all this fancy shmancy magazine-inspired reformatting of content? If you want a barebones yet functional and attractive RSS reader, why not go straight to the source of all your RSS subscribey delight? Chances are you already have a Google Reader account, and chances are it’s already filled with your favourite content anyway. What’s neat about using this app is that it gives you a simple way to search for and subscribe to new feeds within your Google Reader account, which is handy when you stumble across a decent blog while using your handset.
The Early Edition 2
For: iPad | Price: $5.49
If you’re the type to settle down to a nice cup o’ joe and the morning paper, but are craving some more dynamic content, The Early Edition 2 is the paper emulator app you’ve been dreaming of since you saw them do such a thing in Space: 1999 (only with less breakfast pills). There are seemingly no shortage of RSS-based reformatted news readers, as you can tell from the previous three reviews, but The Early Edition 2 is noteworthy for its old-world newspaper feel. To save you importing all your favourite RSS feeds, you can browse by category or import your feeds from a Google Reader account.
Google Currents
For: iOS, Android | Price: Free
Google’s take on the magazine-like experience, Google Currents could be considered a Flipboard for Android (and yes, iOS too). It doesn’t bring in your Facebook and Twitter feeds, but you can import any RSS feed you wish, so it’s not difficult to bring them in. It has two ‘editions’ within the app: published editions, which are feeds from reputable blogs and magazines; and trending editions, which are the top trending articles for any of a number of categories, powered by Google News. Added features include the offline reading of content (great for flights) and syncing of your subscribed editions across your devices.
Pulse News
For: iOS, Android | Price: Free
Pulse is a news aggregation app that displays all the news stories across a multitude of feeds, including your Facebook stream, Google Reader subscriptions or any of the preinstalled news sources. There are also a heap of ‘Pulse Packs’ available, which will dedicate a whole page to the best news sources in a selected category, including tech, news and analysis, entertainment, sports, business, fun and more. For any extra-long articles you may like to read, the Pulse.me service (a free signup is required) allows ‘starred’ articles to automatically appear in Instapaper, Pocket, Evernote or to the Pulse.me site for later reading from any web browser.
News360
For: iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, PlayBook | Price: Free
Rather than just subscribing to a slew of feeds and magazines, News360 looks at the content on your various social networks — including Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and even Evernote — and based on the content, finds the news it thinks will interest you the most. Additionally, when you’re reading a story, you can click on important people, companies and brands that are mentioned to find out a little more about them. You can view local news by providing your location, or see news that’s relevant to an upcoming holiday destination by connecting it to TripIt. If you know what topics you’re looking for, you can always browse the traditional way as well, via category.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
For: iOS, Android | Price: Free
ABC is the other taxpayer-funded Australian news agency. This app provides you with on-the-go access to ABC News 24, any of the many national ABC radio stations and podcasts, and the latest stories from the news desk and beyond. You can browse for the latest news, stories by category or just tune into your preferred radio station and let the DJ do all the work. For the iPad version, click here.
Reeder
For: iOS | Price: $2.99
iOS users looking for the barebones RSS reader that droid-heads enjoy with Google Reader should turn their attention to Reeder. Reeder can sync with multiple Google Reader, Fever or Readability accounts (although it won’t work without one of these accounts), and can share out interesting articles, sites, links, text selections and images to a laundry list of services. The strength of the app is in its gorgeous user interface — an understated, minimal paper feel — which includes gestures to move between articles, mark as unread, star, move back to the article list and zoom in on images.
For: iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry | Price: Free and up
The final entry in this guide isn’t from a fancy, frilly, make-your-news-look-sexy app, but from the arguably premier citizen news tool: Twitter. Twitter has played a crucial role in breaking some of the most important news stories of the last few years. Through some clever searching, you can find a constant stream of information from people reporting on the ground as events are actually happening. So, the next time an #ArabSpring occurs, be sure to open up your preferred Twitter app and subscribe to an appropriate hashtag. You’ll find out some amazing things, usually before the news agencies can report on them.
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